Thursday, October 27, 2016

2016 Crisis Part 4: Radio Free America

WikiLeaks. A simple phrase or word (not sure...two capitals but no space. I'm stumped) but one that inspires a lot of controversy and debate. I think it is important to separate the information into different buckets.

Trump, in one of his most brilliant statements of the campaign, said that he hoped Russia or WikiLeaks has some of the 33,000 emails that Clinton deleted because he was sure that the journalists would be reward them for making them public. I call this statement brilliant because it beautifully exposed the American corporate media complex for the frauds they are in this particular controversy. They do not want to see those 33,000 emails.

Immediately both the left and the media (redundant?) lashed out saying that Mr. Trump just encouraged Russia to hack private email accounts. Two things about this: 1) he is talking about something that would've already had have to had happened and therefore he is not encouraging any new behavior, and 2) we DON'T HAVE TO ENCOURAGE our enemy to do those things that enemies naturally do. This one stupid misconception of the world could spark voluminous posts, but I'm going to put that aside for now.

The main issue pertaining to these emails, the supposed 33,000 deleted while under subpoena, we as Americans have a right to see. Either with our own eyes, or the eyes of our Congressional representative doing the people's work on Capitol Hill. We elect them to provide oversight, and in doing so issued a lawful subpoena. One that the former Secretary of State chose to not comply with. So let's put those in a bucket we'll call the one's we deserve to be exposed.

Then, let's look at the public/private speeches Mrs. Clinton gave and was paid to give. Unless each person attending signed a confidential agreement she should not have an expectation of privacy. Let's be serious, she's speaking in a large forum with hundreds of attendees. This hardly passes as private communication. Anyone who ran an audio recorder on their phone and leaked to WikiLeaks I feel that we as voters have a right to know. After all, knowing the person running for President dreams of a hemispheric open border is important. So, I'm okay reading her speeches.

Then there is the third basket, the private emails among her staff. These were not government employees at the time and there was clearly an expectation of privacy. One staffer, saying to another staffer, that Bernie Sanders is a "doofus" hardly constitutes something I should consider when voting, or should have a right to know. And yet there are some of those, in which a Clinton campaign workers communicates to a government employee in the White House that they need to "clean up" the fact that there may be emails between the President and the Secretary of State on a private email server, now that is also a slight different animal in this basket.

The left and most of the media refuses to really discuss the content some of the content of the WikiLeaks emails because they claim they shouldn't have to address matters that are only public because they were stolen. That didn't stop Mrs. Clinton from discussing the contents of a stolen tax form to an audience of 71 million Americans during the second debate. But, we have come to expect this level of hypocrisy from the left. No new news here.

For the purpose of this post, I want to narrow my focus to the first basket, those emails that were under subpoena, and the media's response to what Trump actually said. Their issue appears to be that even though we as citizens have a right to see that information, when it might be made public by a foreign government then it is wrong. This constitutes a foreign government manipulating the American political process. And we all stand solidarity against that sort of thing.

I started thinking about that for a while. It didn't take long to come to a sad realization. We were now relying on a foreign government to get information that our own government was legally compelled to provide. In America, we used to be all about providing that kind of information. In fact, we were all about making sure those living behind the iron curtain had that type of information about their own governments. It was called Radio Free Europe. It would attempt to educate what the Soviet Union government was really like. And, how what their state run media was telling them was inaccurate. And so with our media not really holding a government official accountable refusing to comply with a subpoena, have we finally reached the point where we as citizens need an outside force to make sure we are getting the truth from our media and government. Do we now have a state-run media?

When the media tells us they are outraged that a foreign government may try to influence our election, are they protecting our soverignity or just upset that they have competition in influencing our elections?  What I didn't hear, from any of them, was any desire to actually see what might have been in those 33,000 emails. And much to our disappointment, with none of those as part of the WikiLeaks material, perhaps the BleachBit got to them before the hackers.

Let's be clear about that last statement. If the emails (again, very clear, we are talking about the emails on Clinton's private server that she sent or received while Secretary of State) were hacked, they would have been hacked before disconnecting server from internet and wiping clean. There are different windows of time that need to be considered. If, as some hackers such as Guccifer claims, had access to read in real-time, then the use of the server could have costed American lives. For some unknown reason we seem to be stuck in this narrow box that we are looking for emails related to Benghazi in which Clinton admits that she knows it is a terrorist attack and is going to lie to the American people. It could be worse. There could be an email from Clinton to Ambassador Stevens that says what time and who is supposed to show up on that night to get the weapons he is trafficking (whoa...before you get all upset this is a hypothetical scenario that I do not have sufficient evidence to state as fact...I'm just saying). Then the whole debate isn't about what she knew and when she knew it, the issue if far more serious for Clinton. The issue then is whether or not her sending such emails over a private server is actually what alerted the wrong team to show up on that night. The reality is we don't know because she hid those emails. And there had to be something serious enough to suffer the political wounds of failing to disclose.

But I hope. I truly hope that foreign governments and/or hackers weren't reading emails from our Secretary of State in real time.

Then there is the time period after she was Secretary of State and before she deleted. If some other government actually has those we, as Americans, would like to see them. I say this for several logical reasons: 1) we have a right to see them, and 2) we need to know whether or not a foreign government has for our future security. I say that because the worst case scenario is they are not made public, but Putin actually does have them. Then, at any time during her presidency, he has the ability to exert force and blackmail our President. So if Russia or WikiLeaks, you better hope they realize before the election.

Secondly, apart from the blackmail perspective, it would also be good to know what your enemy actually does know. Since Clinton stupidly chose to do her job over a private unsecured server, we are left guessing if everything she communicated is actually known in the Kremlin, or Iran, or North Korea, etc. This middle ground we are left in, where we don't really know what has been compromised, leaves us at a serious disadvantage. And Mrs. Clinton has put us there.

For their part, the media couldn't care less about these issues. They seem more worried about Russia influencing our elections than actually controlling a President. The actual truth, which the American people deserve, might be third or fourth on their list of concerns. And so we are left with WikiLeaks taking on the job of Radio Free America helping us get to the truth. However, don't be fooled. Although WikiLeaks now might be providing a public service, there is a dark and sinister side looming just around the corner. Because our media has failed to provide the type of oversight we deserve and expect we are left relying on a source that does not have a our long-term best interest at heart.

So just how did both the media and Clinton make Trump out to be the villain in this one?

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